I have to say, it was with very mixed emotions that I read Paul Krugman’s piece on healthcare reform yesterday which is here. On the one hand, he is absolutely right, that we have to look around the world to find examples of countries that have figured out how to deliver healthcare in scale to the masses without breaking the bank. That point is 100% valid, but sadly he stopped there.
Which is why I was delighted to see the article Paul O’Neill wrote here, on the same physical page, albeit below the fold. O’Neill points out that there are some astonishing statistics about basic flaws in healthcare related to things as basic as infections in hospitals. Beyond the lofty overall comparisons that Krugman offers, O’Neill is dead on in the need to focus on more tactical, basic mistakes that shouldn’t be tolerated. It is nothing short of inexcusable that there are not already controls in place to enforce these policies (absent some obvious lack of basic human motivation to do the right thing which David Brooks wrote about today very elegantly today here).
I talk a lot about what O’Neill did for Alcoa in the Rethink book, specifically his ability to find the right metric that drives overall success. I have to say the metrics he points out in this Monday article seem more glaringly obvious, and I am a bit disappointed that Nobel laureate Krugman chose to give this issue such a simplistic spin – O’Neill, again, has hit the nail on the head in terms of what’s needed.
I just hope the Obama team read this O’Neill piece so they can focus on fixing some basic problems, rather than just seeing if they can make their cost models align with the rest of the world.
-Ric
the Economic Recession has been pretty hard on us. some of my friends lost their job because of the massive job cuts. i just hope that our economy becomes better in the following years.